Hi everyone, the ´happy wanderers´ are feeling even happier now they have finally arrived in southern Espana and Alfie has felt the first sand between his pads! The day after our last entry was the worst since leaving home. It started off pretty good, cruising along the autovia (motorway) through some nice mountain scenery to start with then it got a bit more industrial, then a lot more industrial then we were driving through thick fog (or was it just smoke from the factories?) Think we went over 20 hours without eating because every time we tried to find a ´nice little town´ we made a quick exit because as soon as we turned off the motorway things went down hill very sharply, northern Spain is nothing to write home about, ´shabby´ says it all. Eventually we stopped at some services just before I passed out at the wheel with hunger, refuelled Daisy and ourselves and decided to tackle Madrid as surely 6.00 ish on a Sunday would be much better than a Monday morning and how bad can it be skirting around the outskirts of the city on a ring road anyway???!!!

! Answer: bloody terrifying! All went fine to begin with, anyone would have thought we did this journey everyday then "oh shit (or something like that!) roadworks" .... "which lines do we follow, the white ones or the yellow ones?" "is there really any need for 6 lanes of traffic", "why won´t they f****g move over", "I´m just a tourist get me out of here!´´ etc, etc. To add to the excitment I think the whole of Spain was travelling round Madrid at the very same time as us, plus it was dark and Daisy´s headlights are not the best! And the place is hugggggggge, for a moment I thought we were back in Bangkok and we certainly weren´t skirting around the outskirts we were definitey right in the very centre of things. It kept going and going and going, until we thought we must be going round in circles and would never get out of the place. Eventually though after about 200 miles (well it felt like that) we made a bid for freedom and started to look for somewhere to stay for the night. And there begins another nightmare which I won´t ramble on about - but after 9 hours driving I wasn´t even bothered about spending the night in a service station, Daisy looking like a mini parked in the middle of a load of lorries, under half a dozen flood lights and some weird surreal music being piped out full blast from the petrol station - or perhaps it was all just a very weird dream?! I think poor Alfie was wishing we had left him at home with nanny king where he could cuddle up with Sally and sup tea (and for just a while we probably were too if we were honest)! Anyway, here we are very happily settled on a brill site on an avacado orchard a few hundred yards away from the sea and the weather is fantastic. Rob has even got his legs out and the feet have been aired in our flip flops! We treated Daisy to a wash this afternoon, after 1,500 miles she was more black than white - we had to scrape off the inch thick dirt and grime. So that´s it for now, we plan to stay here for a while to recharge the batteries ........ See ya soon. Rob, Nicky, Alfie and Daisy x